Tackling the Mobile Community Through Email

More and more people are checking their email on BlackBerrys, iPhones and other mobile devices. Like the automobile and television set before them, smartphones will likely become more popular and affordable until almost everyone has one. The question on many marketers' minds: how is the mobile trend affecting our business and marketing emails?

A few mobile factors to consider…

• You can't pinpoint on your own how many of your subscribers view your email on a mobile device. However, you can survey them.
• Some subscribers divide their email-checking between their home or office computers and their mobile device.
• Many people use mobile devices for urgent messages and save non-essential ones for later. So odds are, even if they receive your email on their mobile, they'll read it later on a computer.

Unfortunately, mobile email design isn't an exact science – at least not yet. There are still many differences in the way various mobile devices treat email. The same goes for internet service providers and email clients. From desktop programs (MSN, Outlook and AOL) to web-based programs (GMail, Yahoo! and Hotmail), each has its own quirks that affect the way your emails look and function. So your email may not always appear, or render, as you intended. And designed-for-mobile emails look bad on a PC.

As we all know, customer experience is everything. If they don't open your email, if they don’t click through, if they unsubscribe… well, that's the ballgame. Some experts recommend treating mobile users as a separate audience with a separate strategy.
But a sole mobile device strategy isn't practical for many small to medium sized businesses.

Others contend that most subscribers will read your email later on a PC or laptop, so there’s no need to go the extra mile. Knowing that customers may view emails in both formats, it's crucial to take these two steps:

• Make sure every email has a "pre-header" that lets users view the email as a web page. (This means you'll actually have two email versions available: html and plain text).
• Keep your subject lines and address lines clear, succinct and recognizable. That way, if someone does open your email on their mobile and it doesn’t render properly, they'll be more likely to open it later at home or work.

Remember that the subscriber – not you – is pulling the strings. People expect to be able to open the email, whether on their computer or their mobile. But "optimized for mobile devices" is still easier said than done. Fortunately, one day, emails will render the same no matter the computer, email service or mobile device.